A little overwealmed about setting up credit card processing in the UK

Have set up a site and been getting payments through Paypal with no problem but now looking to accept credit cards (without using paypal's credit card processing) but am overwealmed about what I should be doing - so much info that I can't digest it all.

Can anyone please give a little advice.

1. I have a Natwest Business Bank account so getting Merchant access will be no problem. If I remember, they were trying to get me to join worldpay a while back.
2. I asked my host about SSL and they say I need to pay £2.50 a month for dedicated IP and another £74 pa for geotrust.

I'd like to know is what would be the best option without changing hosts. Do I need SSL? or can credit card details be entered/processed by a third party site (with security).

Basically, what would be the best solution from start to finish?

There are actually two kinds of credit card clearers: those who expect you to have a merchant account eg. Protx and those that don't eg. Worldpay.

I've found that Worldpay are very helpful and straightforward to deal with so far. The main issue you have to contend with is do you actually need a credit card merchant account? I decided that I didn't as its early days for me. Worldpay will provide everything for me - at a cost. You need to get a spreadsheet going and calculate the costs of the various options.

Incidentally, when I was setting up PayPal I seem to remember being a little annoyed with myself because they were offering credit card clearing without the PayPal bit ... I think.

It needn't cost you a fortune.

Forum rules prohibit plugging any particular company so PM me if you want further details but basically my fixed monthly cost is £20 and setup was £0. All with well known names.

Yes, you should secure your site as the costs are so low these days. I got my SSL for under a tenner (Geotrust/Equifax root) and fixed IP is £1/month.

Thanks for both your replies.

I saw a SSL for 10pa on here which I may go for along with something like Worldpay? (brent, please do pm me with your recommendation).

To clarify, the SSL is hosted on that companies site rather than the one I'm currently hosting the site? How would I integrate the 2 or do I have to move from my current host altogether?